Mapbox Choropleth Maps in Python

How to make a Mapbox Choropleth Map of US Counties in Python with Plotly.

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Plotly is a free and open-source graphing library for Python. We recommend you read our Getting Started guide for the latest installation or upgrade instructions, then move on to our Plotly Fundamentals tutorials or dive straight in to some Basic Charts tutorials.

A Choropleth Map is a map composed of colored polygons. It is used to represent spatial variations of a quantity. This page documents how to build tile-map choropleth maps, but you can also build outline choropleth maps using our non-Mapbox trace types.

Below we show how to create Choropleth Maps using either Plotly Express' px.choropleth_mapbox function or the lower-level go.Choroplethmapbox graph object.

Mapbox Access Tokens and Base Map Configuration¶

To plot on Mapbox maps with Plotly you may need a Mapbox account and a public Mapbox Access Token. See our Mapbox Map Layers documentation for more information.

Introduction: main parameters for choropleth tile maps¶

Making choropleth Mapbox maps requires two main types of input:

GeoJSON-formatted geometry information where each feature has either an id field or some identifying value in properties.
A list of values indexed by feature identifier.

The GeoJSON data is passed to the geojson argument, and the data is passed into the color argument of px.choropleth_mapbox (z if using graph_objects), in the same order as the IDs are passed into the location argument.

Note the geojson attribute can also be the URL to a GeoJSON file, which can speed up map rendering in certain cases.

GeoJSON with `feature.id`¶

Here we load a GeoJSON file containing the geometry information for US counties, where feature.id is a FIPS code.

In [1]:

from urllib.request import urlopen
import json
with urlopen('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plotly/datasets/master/geojson-counties-fips.json') as response:
    counties = json.load(response)

counties["features"][0]

Out[1]:

{'type': 'Feature',
 'properties': {'GEO_ID': '0500000US01001',
  'STATE': '01',
  'COUNTY': '001',
  'NAME': 'Autauga',
  'LSAD': 'County',
  'CENSUSAREA': 594.436},
 'geometry': {'type': 'Polygon',
  'coordinates': [[[-86.496774, 32.344437],
    [-86.717897, 32.402814],
    [-86.814912, 32.340803],
    [-86.890581, 32.502974],
    [-86.917595, 32.664169],
    [-86.71339, 32.661732],
    [-86.714219, 32.705694],
    [-86.413116, 32.707386],
    [-86.411172, 32.409937],
    [-86.496774, 32.344437]]]},
 'id': '01001'}

Data indexed by `id`¶

Here we load unemployment data by county, also indexed by FIPS code.

In [2]:

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plotly/datasets/master/fips-unemp-16.csv",
                   dtype={"fips": str})
df.head()

Out[2]:

	fips	unemp
0	01001	5.3
1	01003	5.4
2	01005	8.6
3	01007	6.6
4	01009	5.5

Choropleth map using plotly.express and carto base map (no token needed)¶

Plotly Express is the easy-to-use, high-level interface to Plotly, which operates on "tidy" data and produces easy-to-style figures.

With px.choropleth_mapbox, each row of the DataFrame is represented as a region of the choropleth.

In [3]:

from urllib.request import urlopen
import json
with urlopen('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plotly/datasets/master/geojson-counties-fips.json') as response:
    counties = json.load(response)

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plotly/datasets/master/fips-unemp-16.csv",
                   dtype={"fips": str})

import plotly.express as px

fig = px.choropleth_mapbox(df, geojson=counties, locations='fips', color='unemp',
                           color_continuous_scale="Viridis",
                           range_color=(0, 12),
                           mapbox_style="carto-positron",
                           zoom=3, center = {"lat": 37.0902, "lon": -95.7129},
                           opacity=0.5,
                           labels={'unemp':'unemployment rate'}
                          )
fig.update_layout(margin={"r":0,"t":0,"l":0,"b":0})
fig.show()

Indexing by GeoJSON Properties¶

If the GeoJSON you are using either does not have an id field or you wish you use one of the keys in the properties field, you may use the featureidkey parameter to specify where to match the values of locations.

In the following GeoJSON object/data-file pairing, the values of properties.district match the values of the district column:

In [4]:

import plotly.express as px

df = px.data.election()
geojson = px.data.election_geojson()

print(df["district"][2])
print(geojson["features"][0]["properties"])

11-Sault-au-Récollet
{'district': '11-Sault-au-Récollet'}

To use them together, we set locations to district and featureidkey to "properties.district". The color is set to the number of votes by the candidate named Bergeron.

In [5]:

import plotly.express as px

df = px.data.election()
geojson = px.data.election_geojson()

fig = px.choropleth_mapbox(df, geojson=geojson, color="Bergeron",
                           locations="district", featureidkey="properties.district",
                           center={"lat": 45.5517, "lon": -73.7073},
                           mapbox_style="carto-positron", zoom=9)
fig.update_layout(margin={"r":0,"t":0,"l":0,"b":0})
fig.show()

Discrete Colors¶

In addition to continuous colors, we can discretely-color our choropleth maps by setting color to a non-numerical column, like the name of the winner of an election.

In [6]:

import plotly.express as px

df = px.data.election()
geojson = px.data.election_geojson()

fig = px.choropleth_mapbox(df, geojson=geojson, color="winner",
                           locations="district", featureidkey="properties.district",
                           center={"lat": 45.5517, "lon": -73.7073},
                           mapbox_style="carto-positron", zoom=9)
fig.update_layout(margin={"r":0,"t":0,"l":0,"b":0})
fig.show()

Choropleth map using plotly.graph_objects and carto base map (no token needed)¶

If Plotly Express does not provide a good starting point, it is also possible to use the more generic go.Choroplethmapbox function from plotly.graph_objects.

In [7]:

from urllib.request import urlopen
import json
with urlopen('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plotly/datasets/master/geojson-counties-fips.json') as response:
    counties = json.load(response)

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plotly/datasets/master/fips-unemp-16.csv",
                   dtype={"fips": str})

import plotly.graph_objects as go

fig = go.Figure(go.Choroplethmapbox(geojson=counties, locations=df.fips, z=df.unemp,
                                    colorscale="Viridis", zmin=0, zmax=12,
                                    marker_opacity=0.5, marker_line_width=0))
fig.update_layout(mapbox_style="carto-positron",
                  mapbox_zoom=3, mapbox_center = {"lat": 37.0902, "lon": -95.7129})
fig.update_layout(margin={"r":0,"t":0,"l":0,"b":0})
fig.show()

Mapbox Light base map: free token needed¶

In [8]:

token = open(".mapbox_token").read() # you will need your own token


from urllib.request import urlopen
import json
with urlopen('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plotly/datasets/master/geojson-counties-fips.json') as response:
    counties = json.load(response)

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plotly/datasets/master/fips-unemp-16.csv",
                   dtype={"fips": str})

import plotly.graph_objects as go

fig = go.Figure(go.Choroplethmapbox(geojson=counties, locations=df.fips, z=df.unemp,
                                    colorscale="Viridis", zmin=0, zmax=12, marker_line_width=0))
fig.update_layout(mapbox_style="light", mapbox_accesstoken=token,
                  mapbox_zoom=3, mapbox_center = {"lat": 37.0902, "lon": -95.7129})
fig.update_layout(margin={"r":0,"t":0,"l":0,"b":0})
fig.show()

Reference¶

See https://plotly.com/python/reference/#choroplethmapbox for more information about mapbox and their attribute options.

What About Dash?¶

Dash is an open-source framework for building analytical applications, with no Javascript required, and it is tightly integrated with the Plotly graphing library.

Learn about how to install Dash at https://dash.plot.ly/installation.

Everywhere in this page that you see fig.show(), you can display the same figure in a Dash application by passing it to the figure argument of the Graph component from the built-in dash_core_components package like this:

import plotly.graph_objects as go # or plotly.express as px
fig = go.Figure() # or any Plotly Express function e.g. px.bar(...)
# fig.add_trace( ... )
# fig.update_layout( ... )

import dash
import dash_core_components as dcc
import dash_html_components as html

app = dash.Dash()
app.layout = html.Div([
    dcc.Graph(figure=fig)
])

app.run_server(debug=True, use_reloader=False)  # Turn off reloader if inside Jupyter